THE STORY
You don't get to leave by hoping. You leave by building.
Before the trip, I told my AI team a handful of things had to keep running without me — email across six inboxes, deal outreach, travel coordination, a deliberation council for hard calls, and a single dashboard I could glance at from a gas station. Then I left for seven days. I didn't just come back to a system that held — I came back to one with ideas: what I could tighten, and what it could improve on next time.
"I didn't come back to a fire. I came back to a queue. AI doesn't replace the operator — it lifts them above the busywork."